VATICAN CITY (CNS) – Just as “The Chosen” wrapped up the release of Season 5 in the United States, the hit series about Jesus and those who knew him was set to stream internationally in select countries, including Italy, starting in July.
The Vatican hosted a news conference and a premiere of one of the new season’s episodes in its film theater June 23 before select cast and crew members hit the red carpet at a Rome theater for a special screening of the episode, “The Last Supper,” with members of the public, including numerous seminarians, priests and nuns living in the Italian capital.
The goal of the series is “for people to get a deeper connection to Christ and to have a more intimate relationship with him,” Jonathan Roumie, who portrays Christ in the series, told Catholic News Service at the red-carpet event.
“I think that is the goal for all of us, for people to go directly to the source and to understand what it is that Jesus actually said, what he meant, what his example was, and how we can incorporate that into our own lives and be better people to each other and better servants of the Lord,” said Roumie.
Elizabeth Tabish, who portrays Mary Magdalene in the series, told CNS that the historical drama resonates with its audience because “we start this entire series with all of these saints before they’re saints. And they’re really messy. They have their own vices and challenges.”
“When we meet Mary Magdalene, she is struggling with demon possession and oppression and PTSD from an assault and suicidal thoughts and an addiction. This is meeting someone in their own personal hell,” she said, but “it’s been so beautiful to witness her story of redemption.”
Mary Magdalene’s faith journey is depicted as a “continued story of constant redemption and of constant growth, where she is learning to stop thinking about her past and really let go of her past and her shame and her anxieties,” to focus on Jesus and “to see how that transforms her,” Tabish said.
In Season 5, her character is “so focused on trying to help Jesus and protect him, and it’s just such a beautiful place to see her in,” she said. “She becomes quite gutsy and outspoken and determined, and I love that, to see a female character go from a real victim to someone so empowered.”
“The Chosen” debuted at the end of 2017 as an online series, which has since expanded to theatrical releases, grossing nearly $140 million globally at the box office.
With more than 900 million episode views and a global audience exceeding 280 million, the series’ creator and director, Dallas Jenkins, said its “secret sauce” is portraying Jesus and those who knew him in a way that is less formal or stiff.
When meeting fans, he said at the news conference, they typically say that what they love about the series is “it just feels so real. It feels so human.”
“Those human moments do not detract from the divinity (of Christ) and do not detract from the spirituality” of the events and teachings they depict, he said.
“In many ways, they make them even more beautiful that the God of the universe came to Earth, Emmanuel, God with us, and laughed with his friends at a wedding,” he said. Seeing the young mother, Mary, wash her child’s hair or tend to him are “the moments that people have responded to so significantly.”
Many of the theological disagreements about Mary and Jesus, said Jenkins, who is an evangelical Christian, “took place after he was here. They take place after the Gospels.”
“I think that by focusing on the humanity of these people while not ignoring the divinity and not ignoring the supernatural, but focusing on the humanity – that has seemed to be what has connected people of multiple faiths, that we can all appreciate that and identify with it and then be drawn closer to Jesus because of that,” he said.
Dominican Father Patrick Briscoe, editor of Our Sunday Visitor, who moderated the press conference, told CNS the series is a “great gift” for Catholics because it offers an opportunity for engagement and genuine conversation.
“As a priest in ministry, what’s been so beautiful is that people have come to me with questions, very specific questions about Scripture that maybe they would have never had before because they’ve realized that a decision was made in the way that a scene was portrayed in the show and they wanted clarity about it,” he said.
“It’s actually raised important questions about how to interpret the Scriptures, about the meaning of particular biblical scenes, and those conversations wouldn’t have happened otherwise. So I found it a great source of engagement and light,” he said.
According to the series’ producers, about 30 percent of viewers belong to no faith tradition at all.
Jenkins said the “endgame” of the show is not popularity or profit, but “to remind people that these events were real” and that biblical figures are more than literary characters or subjects depicted in art.
“The show is to point you towards the real person of Jesus and to point people towards people like yourself. To get disciples and to worship and to pray,” he said.
